Understanding Lithic Recycling at the Late Lower Palaeolithic Qesem Cave, Israel

Flakes, and small flakes in particular, are usually seen as by-products or debris of the knapping process, rather than as desired end-products with a specific potential use. In recent years, this particular category of small tools has attracted increasing interest among researchers, especially when focusing on technological aspects in Lower Palaeolithic contexts, while the functional role of these tools is still poorly investigated. ‘Understanding Lithic Recycling at the Late Lower Palaeolithic Qesem Cave, Israel: A functional and chemical investigation of small flakes’ examines Late Lower Palaeolithic Qesem Cave, Israel, where a particular lithic trajectory directed towards the production of small flakes by means of recycling and exploiting old discarded flakes as cores has been recognised. The high density of this production throughout the stratigraphic sequence of the cave demonstrates that this was a conscious and planned technological choice aimed at providing small and sharp items to meet specific functional behaviours, and that this lithic behaviour persisted for some 200 kyr of human use of the cave. The exceptional conservation of use-wear signs and residues has made it possible to reconstruct the functional role of this specific production system, highlighting its specialised nature mostly related to the processing of the animal carcasses through accurate and careful actions and in a very specific way. The application of functional analysis based on the determination of wear on artefacts by means of optical light microscope, scanning electron microscopy and chemical analysis (FTIR and EDX), provides a useful and effective approach for understanding the adaptive strategies of the Qesem Cave hominins while facing various situations and solving different needs.

Table of Contents

LIST OF FIGURES

LIST OF TABLES

PREFACE

1. INTRODUCTION

2. METHODOLOGY AND TECHNIQUES

3. THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL CONTEXT: QESEM CAVE AND THE LOWER PALAEOLITHIC IN THE LEVANT

4. THE RECYCLING PHENOMENON AND ITS MANIFESTATIONS AT QESEM CAVE

5. THE EXPERIMENTAL PROGRAMME

6. POST DEPOSITIONAL SURFACE MODIFICATION (PDSM)

7. THE FUNCTIONAL AND RESIDUE ANALYSES OF THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL MATERIAL

8. DISCUSSION

9. CONCLUSION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

APPENDIX A

APPENDIX B

APPENDIX C

FLAVIA VENDITTI is currently a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Tel Aviv, Israel. She specialises in the functional analysis of quartz and flint lithic tool production and has a particular interest in Palaeolithic assemblages. During her MA studies, she started working in the field of use-wear analysis under the supervision of Professor Cristina Lemorini at University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’. She focused her research on the use-wear study of a quartz assemblage form the Middle Palaeolithic site of Coudouolous in Quercy (France). Subsequently, she attended a two-years Masters class in Archaeological Heritage at University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’ and completed her dissertation on the effects of the mechanical postdepositional alteration on quartz artifacts coming from Neolithic sites of the Sai Island (Sudan). Flavia completed her doctorate in 2017 with a research project on the functional analysis of the products of recycling from the Lower Palaeolithic Qesem Cave site in the Levant. She is a member of the Qesem Cave team project taking part in the annual archaeological excavations on the site.